After Hours
by LoveChilde
Summary: The answer to Morgan's question at the end of 6X20. Just a quiet conversation in a bar, after a hard day at the end of a hard month at the end of a very hard year. Spoliers up to and including 6X20.


(Not mine. Spoilers for 6X18 and 6X20. Angst. Lots and lots of angst. Unbetaed, written in the two hours after watching 6X20. )

After Hours

"If anybody saw us here like this, it could get a bit awkward." There's a glass of wine in front of her, a tumbler of scotch for him. Around them, the bar is humming with quiet, unobtrusive conversation, dimly lit, and they're tucked away in a shadowy corner where they're unlikely to be seen. It's comfortable.

"Will, or the team?" He sips the scotch, pacing himself. He's not planning on driving home, but it's taken one shot to get him here, and he doesn't want to be hung over tomorrow. It's a worknight.

"The team. Will knows where I am, and he understands." She sips her wine delicately, and spears an olive from the plate between them.

"You've got a better taste in spouses that I ever did." She was smart to marry a cop, someone who pretty much gets what it means by way of hours and availability. The scotch is bitter on his tongue, or maybe he's just bitter and unable to taste anything else.

"I'm lucky." He is as well, but she knows he won't be able to accept that right now, and maybe considering the past month, he's not really all that lucky anymore. "How're you holding up?"

She's not on his team anymore, and she's a friend, and he's mellowed out by alcohol. "We've been doing grief counseling. _I've_ been doing sessions, for the others. At least I managed to talk Strauss into letting me do it instead of her."

Her mouth twists, half amused, half disgusted. "And who's doing your own session?"

"You are." Wasn't that clear? She nods, as if she'd just been verifying the point. "You can even call Strauss and tell her, if you think I'm not fit for duty." He knows she won't, even if she does think it. "Dave tried, but…He knows better than to push." He made him smile for the first time in two weeks, though. It was a start. "Have you heard anything?"

"No." Her wine's almost gone, but she _is_ going to drive home, so her next drink order is a diet coke.

"And if you hear you can't tell me anyway." He twirls a toothpick, drawing patterns in a puddle of condensation on the table. The only reason he knows at all is just in case Doyle finds out and comes after the team to get at Emily, so someone'd be ready for him. And because JJ needed help hiding it from the others. He's team leader, it's his job to know what the others can't.

"Yup." She reaches across the table, touches his hand lightly. It's enough to make him stop and actually look at her for the first time since they sat down. "Why do that to yourself, Hotch?"

He knows what she's asking, and he doesn't try to avoid the question or pretend he misunderstood it. He respects her too much to play games. "I owe it to them. They shouldn't have to spread out their grief to strangers. It's private." And Strauss isn't just a stranger, she's a hostile one. They've all got a lingering resentment towards her since Foyet and Haley, even if she'd ended up on their side, such as it was.

"Keeping it in the family?" She half smiles, her hand still on his, not holding but present, in contact. It's more than he's had with anybody other than Jack in a while, and there's nothing sexual about it, but it's comforting. "I know it's SOP, but did it have to be you?"

"I owe it to them." He repeats. He's partially the cause of their grief, this is his penance. The least he can do to try and ease their pain. Seeing the extent of their pain, knowing he could ease it with a sentence but knowing also that he absolutely can't, hurts as much as Foyet's knife had, in a way. Except that this pain, while it scars, makes him feel better in a twisted way. He's silent too long, but she reads everything he can't say in his eyes. She's as good a profiler as any trained BAU agent, when it comes to her team.

"Martyrdom, Hotch? Really? I thought you were past that." She worries about him. He's holding too much back, bottling too much away. They all know where that could lead, for even the strongest people. "You don't really owe it to them."

"I do. They trust me to protect them, if not from the unsubs than from the people who're technically on our side. Talking about it to me is hard enough for them." He remembers Garcia, remembers Morgan's broken voice, and knows it was harder for Morgan to open up than it was for Hotch to absorb his pain. "I couldn't protect Emily from Doyle. This is the least I can do to correct that." Her hand's holding his now, squeezing tightly, and he's not sure if it's for his sake or hers. Either way, he lets her continue. "I miss her. Every day, I miss her."

"They do too." She says quietly. Suddenly he can't speak through the lump in his throat, and drains the rest of his scotch to melt it away. His hand never leaves hers.

"Yeah. They do." He can't continue.

"But?" This is the block. They have to get past it. He needs another drink, and raises his free hand for a refill. They sit in silence until it arrives and he knocks it back in one gulp, feeling the burn.

His lips move but there's no sound. He tries again. "But they don't worry." He sits still, breathing hard, like he's just run a four minute mile. She waits, lets him work up to continuing. "As far as they know, she's- she's at peace. They deal with the grief, the loss, the anger. They miss her- but they know she can't be hurt anymore. She's safe. One less person to worry about."

"Oh, Hotch." She takes both his hands now in both of hers. All four hands are shaking, and holding them tightly together helps with that. For a short while, it helps.

"I couldn't keep her safe when she was here." He continues after a while, when the silence becomes too heavy and the noise from the other tables threatens to choke them both. "And now I don't even know where she is, and I can't help her. I _can't_ keep her safe." It echoes back far too powerfully to Haley. Another one he couldn't keep safe, and had to leave, for her own safety. It hadn't helped Haley- would it help Emily? Could it? She couldn't outrun it the first time, across years and two continents. "It's unfair, JJ."

"I know. It really is." Her thumbs are rubbing the backs of his hands, small, neat circles of warmth keeping him grounded. "She can take care of herself, Hotch. She can."

"She shouldn't have to." Anger seeps into his voice for the first time, anger too long held back. "We should've caught Doyle. She shouldn't have had to run." They should've caught Foyet, too. They should keep their family safe. They can't, and it kills him. How long before he loses another one? How long before he loses himself?

"You couldn't have. She left on her own willingly, Hotch." She reminds him.

"To protect _us!_" He snaps back. He shouldn't be yelling at her. She's here to help him. It's not her fault, even if she is the one who dropped this knowledge on him, this burden. "She shouldn't have had to."

"But she did. She wasn't Haley, Hotch. She made a choice, consciously." It'd been a bad choice maybe, a wrong choice, but it wasn't Hotch's fault. "It wasn't your fault." She says out loud, then repeats it. "Not your fault, Hotch."

"Saying it doesn't change how I feel." He's tired, so tired of worrying. Haley, Jack, Emily, all the others. "There's an even bigger hole in the team, JJ. It started when you left, and now…It's like losing a limb. We keep waiting for her input, waiting for her wit or her irritation. We order enough food for seven every time, and wonder why there's one sandwich or eggroll left." He really wants that fourth scotch, but he has to pick Jack up from his sleepover tomorrow morning and take him to school, and then go to the office and look normal. He shakes his head. "I'm rambling. And a little drunk."

"Maybe you need to be." What he needs, she things, is to let go of the guilt. But there's probably not enough words in the world to make that happen tonight, and definitely not enough scotch.

"I'm sorry." He's not even sure what he's apologizing for.

"So am I." She knows exactly what she's sorry for, and sorry about. They keep holding hands, him looking down at the table, her looking at him. She doesn't feel time passing, but the light glints off the watch of a woman going by them, and she notices the hour and reluctantly, slowly, she lets go. "I have to- It's getting late." He blinks, returning from some inner journey, and looks at his watch.

"It is. I should go as well." He stands up too fast, sways a little, and she grabs his arm to steady him. His eyes are less exhausted, less faded and blank, and his face seems less drawn. It's not just the alcohol. She knows he'll be able to get through tomorrow, and the next day and the one after it, and maybe, maybe, he'll be able to forgive himself eventually. Not for a long time, though. It'll be easier when they get Doyle, and it's not a question of 'if', but of 'when'. She doesn't want to think about the alternative. Having to deal with Emily's actual death might be more than both of them can handle.

He calls a taxi. They wait outside the bar, close but not touching, silent. The spring night is cool around them.

"I'm going out of town tomorrow for a couple of days. Should be back by Saturday." She says. "If you need another session."

He almost smiles. "What's your assessment of me? Am I cleared for field duty?"

"By rights, none of you are. But yes, I don't think you're a danger to anyone but yourself, and martyrs aren't suicides. The others will keep you safe from outside threats." She smiles sadly, and he nods, his shoulders relaxing.

'Thanks, JJ."

"Anytime, Hotch. Well, any time after Saturday, but you know my number." If he has a crisis of faith, if he needs to talk some more. She's still number two on his speed dial after Jessica.

He kisses her cheek when the taxi arrives, and she hugs him, the way she'd never dared to when she worked for him. It takes him a moment to hug her back, as if he can't remember what to do with his hands.

She stands and watches the taxi disappear, and thinks. As horrifying as it was at the time, as terrible as the memory of it still is now, she wonders whether Doyle knows what happened to the last man who'd hurt someone Aaron Hotchner called family. She hopes he does. She hopes, with fierce hatred, that wherever he is now, he is very, very afraid.

For Hotch's sake, she hopes somebody else gets their hands on Doyle first.


End file.
